A coupon is a ticket or a document that can be exchanged for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product. Coupons provide a popular method to promote the sale of goods and services. Customarily, coupons are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods or by retailers to be used in retail stores as a part of sales promotions. Coupons are often widely distributed through mail, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and mobile devices such as cell phones.
To redeem a coupon, a consumer presents merchandise to be purchased to a cashier at a retail outlet. After the merchandise is scanned for purchase, the consumer provides the coupon to the cashier. The cashier then scans or keys in the coupon at a cash register. Conventional coupons only relay a limited amount of information to the cash register. Examples of data relayed to the cash register include a coupon number, an expiration date, a number of redeemed coupons, and the product for which the coupon is applicable. The cash register uses this information to access a local database and accept or reject the offer provided by the coupon. The coupons corresponding to the accepted offers are applied to the corresponding goods.
Coupons are generally issued by merchants and manufacturers to promote particular goods. However, other entities may also wish to influence consumer behavior. What is needed is a method to provide different entities such as a merchant, a payment processing organization, and an issuer with a means to provide offers to a consumer.